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Reflections from the 2013 Summit: Summary of Day 1, October 9th 2013 OPENING CEREMONY… and Preview of Day 2, October 10th 2013

The opening ceremony started of with a speech from Mr. Larry Reed, the Director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign and Mrs. Mila Mercado Bunker, the President of Ahon sa Hirap, Inc. (ASHI), and Chairperson of the Microfinance Council of the Philippines, Inc. After that, there were speeches made by some of the speakers including Amando Tetangco Jr., the Governor of the Central Bank of the Philippines, Philippines; Florencio “Butch” Abad, Budget Secretary, Philippines; Sharif al din Hasan, Minister, Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs, Indonesia; Muhammad Yunus, Founderof Grameen Bank, Bangladesh; and Karen Dávila, award-winning Filipino broadcast journalist and television and presenter. In his speech, Governer Tetango said, “It is my personal wish to see every Filipino productively contributing to and reaping the benefits of a robust economy. This vision also underlies the policy and regulatory actions of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. We endeavor to maintain price stability; safeguard the soundness and efficiency of the financial system, at the same time provide an environment that enables every citizen, especially the poor, to access appropriate financial services including microcredit. We are all here because we share the same vision and goal. Together we can cover a lot of ground. Now is the time for all of us in the public and private sectors to work more closely together as partners in achieving high productivity and economic growth that translates into better lives.” He added that “two thirds of the worlds poor live in Asia and the Pacific region”…

According to Budget secretary Florencio Abad, “The Philipines is in the midst of a process of substantial changes in governance”. The main question of the day was howcan government reform help financial inclusion in your country? Secretary Abad adds “Economic prosperity of nations depends on the nature of political institutions”. “The government and commercial banks cannot help achieve financial inclusion as well as MFIs and other organisations. Financial inclusion requires grass roots support and community presence which the commercial banks are unable to provide”

As well as a speech made by Mrs. Valerie Boffy, speaking about her experiences climbing Mt. Everest and its paralels with combating extreme poverty. The kind of resources and strength you need to climb the Everest is comparable to the things you need for ending poverty. Climbing the Everest requires technology, experience/know-how, confidence, favourable weather, good health and luck. The same ingredients are required to end poverty. She also talks about her non-profit entity, Women on a Mission, which she co-founded helping to combat poverty by raising awareness and funds for a humanitarian cause. See more here: https://mcsummit.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=3246&action=edit

Can MF lend to anybody? Nobody should be out of the financial services. Everybody should have access to financial services… We have to redesign products to keep everyone within the financial sector. When we started Microcredit, we were NOT looking at job creation; we were focusing more on self- employment. The future for poor people is in self-employment. It’s about creating entrepreneurs. Each borrower can create jobs. We believe all human beings are entrepreneurs. If you want to solve the problem of poverty by job creation, you won’t go very far. Look at Europe for example; half of the youth are unemployed because all structure is based on creating jobs and not on creating entrepreneurs.

Define social business? A non-dividend company to solve human problems. We have created many social businesses in Bangladesh. We have taken this message abroad. We create a social fund. Gradually they buy us out and repay us without paying over and above the capital. We have no expectation of returns whatsoever. Money has become an addiction. That is a distortion of being human. Humans are selfish and yet selfless. A Social Business is not martyrdom, it’s not charity. I do business my capital comes back. In charity, money is used once. Here, money goes out and comes back in. This is business and appeals to poor people right away. Every business can run a Social business in parallel.

What makes some clients succeed? No one fails but the range of success differs, some are small and some major. People do it in a very marginal way, first they pay back with interest. That’s a success I would say. Then you save a bit and send children to school. That’s a success. So you have to go step by step. By selling few chickens you don’t change your life. You change your life by changing your mindset. Selling a few chickens starts that mind set change. These are the heroes of history. They have changed the financial system. It’s the same the world over. We work in NYC now. Our address has changed holistically. We need to ask what we are doing for this second generation, our kids generation. Also, Bangladesh was a basket case as declared by the ‘big guys’. We have to prove them wrong. We have achieved the first MDG to reduce poverty by half and so the next round will be easier for us. We will create poverty museums. We have created the steel in ourselves to address.

Does family planning end poverty? It is complex. Despite everything that we have. We persuaded our leaders to reduce poverty. We have to believe in it. Corruption is a big issue. Bad governance too. It all holds us up. Let us not comprise on our major goal.

What more can MFIs do? Learn from each other. Charge our batteries. Win the war with determination. Again, NOBODY should be excluded. We have to evolve to a more holistic approach. Our entire mission is to help people come out of poverty. MFI is merely a tool to do so, It’s not our main business. We would like to be the first county to build a poverty museum.

Where do you get the fire? When you see the change your work you bubble with enthusiasm. I say I remove profit from business. People say that is the inventive. I say profit is not the only incentive. Making yourself money that is happiness. But you make others happy that is super happiness. We’ll make it! We will not fail in 2030. We will come up with 15 new ideas and make things happen. We will win this war.

The Partnership Plenary was next. How, when and why to partner? This plenary focused on the question ‘What is a multi-sector partnership?’ – an ongoing working relationship which shares risks and benefits.

Nick Luft

Emerging trends

opportunities for collaboration are widening

stakeholder engagement is taking place

profile, branding and communication matter

organisations are becoming increasingly strategic in their engagement

organisations use local networks for global partnerships

stakeholders are increasingly important

What is an ideal partner?

knowledge sharer

creates synergy

proactive

transparent

clear value proposition

How do originations partner?

The partnering cycle includes:

funding

engaging

building

implementing

reviewing

Partnerships work when:

there are right partners

they achieve the right results

add value to all partners

appreciate the transactional costs involved with the partnerships

highest standards of project management

engagement and buy in across the board

culture of ongoing review

Global index shows that 2.5 billions left out! 70% of the poor are unbanked

it’s time to take what works and leverage it in bigger ways

the big question is why does it matter – what is needed

Roger Voorhies (Bill and Melinda Gates foundation)

Richard Leftley – Micro Ensure

Working with MFIs… The most successful case is giving insurance as a reward for using air time – this benefits the client and the teleco provider

Going the Extra Mile plenary: This is a modified pitch session in which each practitioner will give an elevator pitch to present their concept for creating pathways out of poverty and to answer the question, why does your program have the most potential to help the most people move out of poverty, and how can we design a program that has the most potential to help the most people do that? They will than be scrutinized and their pitch judged.

This blog is no longer being regularly updated. If you would like to get involved in global financial inclusion actions, contact info[at]microcreditsummit.org.

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